Meet Minnesota's new deer boss

McInenly, a wildlife biologist who had been working on forest policy issues, recently was named "big game program leader" by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

The position is the overseer of Minnesota's annual deer hunting season, and when McInenly, a 36-year-old Stillwater resident, takes over fully from predecessor Lou Cornicelli, it will be the first time anyone other than Cornicelli has overseen the state's most popular hunting event in a decade.

"There's a lot of attention on this job, I know that," McInenly said in an interview Wednesday, Nov. 21, shortly after settling into her new office. "For some people, that's not something they want, but I'm OK with it."

The public face of the deer hunt easily can become the target of ire from unhappy deer hunters, who could be upset at a deer management decision that lowered a hunter's chances or at a situation that -- for whatever reason -- resulted in a bad hunt that a hunter blames on the DNR, fairly or not.

McInenly, a former elk researcher who for the past six years has been a DNR employee on staff at the Minnesota Forest Resources Council, said she went after the job, in part, because she wanted to return to wildlife work. She said she sees an upside to being in the public eyes of the 500,000 or so deer hunters in the state.

"It provides an opportunity to be out there getting feedback, and people will challenge and question you," she said.

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"People have a tendency to get insular in a job, and this won't allow that. Of course, you have to recognize there's never going to be 100 percent agreement among the public and the managers, but as long as you have a transparent and public process, people can be confident in it."

Indeed, plenty of deer hunters have disagreed with Cornicelli's decisions, but many kept a respect for him, if not his decisions.

Leslie McInenly, 36, of Stillwater has been hired as the new "big game program leader" for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. McInenly's primary job will be to oversee the deer hunt, which Lou Cornicelli has overseen for the last decade. (Courtesy photo)

"I liked the guy individually," said Kirk Schnitker, a member of the Southwest Minnesota Deer Coalition and one of the loudest critics among any group of deer hunters clamoring for more game on the land. "He'd probably be a great guy to spend some time in a fishing boat. Looking at his years strictly from a cautious wildlife manager approach, I give him an A-plus, but from a sportsmen's approach, I give him a C."

Cornicelli has heard plenty from critics like Schnitker, and he's developed a reputation for taking it in stride.

"Some folks don't like the outcomes we come up with, but I think we've shown we listen to the public input," he said. "It's not the agency sitting in a dark smoky room making decisions anymore."

Cornicelli, who last year became the DNR's wildlife research manager but stayed on as deer boss until a replacement was named, leaves behind a legacy of changes that include the ability for hunters to hunt anywhere in the state with a single tag and a management shift from a mainly buck-only hunt to one that includes antlerless.

And he has successfully reduced the deer population.

Cornicelli's boss -- and McInenly's boss -- Steve Merchant, the DNR's wildlife programs manager, said Cornicelli succeeded at his task at hand -- so much so that there's a different task at hand now.

"Lou came in at a time when we were trying to come up with a solution to an overabundant deer population that we were concerned might be unmanageable," Merchant said. "We're in a quite different situation now."

The situation now is that many hunters in the northeast and southwest believe the DNR went too far in reducing the population. Meanwhile, hunters in the southeast are experimenting with antler-point restrictions intended to grow more trophy bucks. Throw in other interests from other groups and you've got what Merchant calls a "splintering approach" throughout the state.

Merchant said he's advised McInenly to "be thick-skinned," and also told her he expects her to take time to get acquainted with the position and that he didn't hire her "as a change agent."

Ask McInenly specifics about deer management in specific areas, and she responds like this: "I don't think I'm in a position at this point to talk about specifics. I'm still getting up to speed. I am really eager to see how the harvest data looks in a lot of these areas, like the antler-point restrictions."

As a hunter, what's McInenly's experience been?

"Actually, I don't hunt," she said. "Obviously I'm not at all opposed to it. My father died when I was 10. A lot of people get hunting from a family tradition. I didn't have that opportunity. Just me personally, I'm not someone who joins groups of people I don't know, and hunting, it's always appeared to me, has involved groups of friends and family going out together. I've never been invited to a hunt."

Both she and Merchant emphasized that hunting is not a prerequisite for managing wildlife, and both said the topic didn't come up during her interview process.

McInenly, who enjoys canoeing and hiking with her 9-year-old daughter, said she might take up hunting, but "I certainly wouldn't do it just to show up in the paper to look like I'm doing my job."

Schnitker, when asked whether that mattered, responded: "Yeah, that bothers me a little, and it bothers me a lot that she comes from forest management and it took over a year to find a replacement for Cornicelli. ... I'd like to ask her about 12 questions and make her squirm a little. She's in a tough job, and she needs to know it."